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Wednesday, 13 April 2011

Second bloggiversary

After two years of waffling on about everything and nothing, methinks that a spot of re-appraisal and reflection is due.

A few months ago, a fellow blogger asked why I referred to where I live as "Tense Towers". It gave me quite a shock to realise that I had never even considered explaining my blog title, let alone the evolution of some of the terms within. In remedying the situation through Comments, the germ of another post was born, and now seems an appropriate moment to unleash it upon an unsuspecting world.

So why Tense Towers? The short answer is that when I set up this blog, I thought it would be all pedantic ranting about either spelling and punctuation or whether people indicated direction and lane changes when driving. To be fair, I was recovering from an operation and was as high as a kite on medication! Anyway, the name "Imperfect and tense" sort of suggested a category of verb whilst also tipping its hat to my fallible and crotchety nature. The sub title, "Instant grammatification" followed suit, punning gratification, grammar and Graeme all at once. I did say I was on drugs!

As it turns out:

1. This isn't a short answer.2. There's a lot less ranting in the blog than I thought there would be.3. I discovered that I rather liked writing about Nature.4. Sadly, I do go back and correct the many mistakes I find in my previous posts.Supposedly, every Englishman's home is his castle, so it was a short step to calling our house Tense Towers. You'll have to ask Our Lass how tense it is, but there definitely aren't any towers (I've checked). The phrase probably nods in the direction of a 1970s John Cleese sitcom "Fawlty Towers", which folk of my age quote a great deal. Whole scenes, in fact. However, I have to admit an absolute heresy and confess to not particularly enjoying FT, there was too much cringe comedy for my liking. However, for me, the most memorable bit was the opening credits, where each week, the letters on the hotel sign were re-arranged to spell something different. Classic!

Anyway, during the Comment communication, it was rightly pointed out to me that perhaps my forte wasn't grammar after all. In truth, this bit wasn't shock news, the vast majority of my posts revolve around nature, and coupled with the lack of ranting, there's a reasonable argument for renaming the blog with a more topical description.

Whilst against rebranding per se, I'm seriously considering this possibility and am pondering likely names. Perhaps I could take a fresh, green leaf out of the Fawlty Towers book and call it... "Insect. Tree. Damp fen".

While the obvious one would be to go for the common name of the Aeshna caerulea - Azure Hawker - this may not be any clearer to your multitudes of curious readers. Twists on Migrant, Vagrant, blue, birds of prey and musings also come to mind, but you aren't blogging entirely about nature either. The odd visit to far flung fields and habitations upsets this thread too.Does the title have to reflect the blog? Is there actually anything Against Tense Towers?Something that alliterates flows well, like a tumbling stream on a mountain side, or a simile.Maybe title migrations from Tense Towers to Tumbling Towers to Broch would amuse the mind and confuse the masses.I doubt you are any closer after my ramblings, but personal gratification has to be the main point. Bramble-Ramblings??!

Having thought about this for some minutes I conclude that in fact the content of your blogs is the antidote to the name. It seems to me that you would be more tense and ranty if it were not for your wildlifey adventures. You could say you get enjoyment out of each adventure twice! There is the adventure itself and then writing about it afterwards too :-)